What Audit Leaders Say About Working With Kasturi

CHALLENGE

The audit team of a mid-cap listed company had informally begun using a general-purpose AI tool to summarise regulatory documents. No usage policy existed, and the head of internal audit was uncertain how to frame the governance question for the audit committee ahead of the annual report season.

WHAT KASTURI DID

We reviewed a sample of the AI-generated summaries alongside the original documents, assessed the tool's position relative to IIA independence requirements, and produced a written brief covering: what was working, where the boundaries needed to be clearer, and what the usage policy should say. Timeline: three weeks from document handover to brief delivery.

OUTCOME

The brief was tabled at the next audit committee meeting. The committee accepted the usage policy and asked for quarterly oversight to be put in place. The team then commissioned the Quarterly Stewardship engagement. Eighteen months later, the audit committee's yearly summary notes AI use under a standing governance item.

CHALLENGE

The internal audit function of a statutory body wanted to understand whether AI reading could reduce the time spent cross-referencing evidence against a large and complex policy library. They had a two-person audit team and a growing document volume. Procurement rules required a structured engagement scope before any software evaluation.

WHAT KASTURI DID

We ran the Evidence Reading and Drafting Pilot over six weeks with a selected subset of their evidence files. Bi-weekly check-ins tracked where the tool's cross-reference suggestions were useful and where they were not. The end-of-pilot brief documented both the productivity gains observed and two categories of document type where AI-assisted reading was not appropriate given the sensitivity of the materials.

OUTCOME

The team adopted AI-assisted reading for the two document categories where it had shown clear value. The two categories where it was not appropriate were excluded from use — a boundary that remains in the written usage policy and is reviewed in the quarterly brief. The head of audit reported that having an honest account of what the tool did not do well was more useful than a positive-only evaluation.

CHALLENGE

The group chief audit executive of a privately held conglomerate had received a proposal from an AI platform vendor. The proposal included a readiness assessment but the CAE was uncertain whether the vendor's assessment would be sufficiently independent to take to the group's audit committee.

WHAT KASTURI DID

We conducted the Audit Workflow Review independently of the vendor proposal — reading the group's own work-paper samples and holding one advisory session with the CAE and a senior auditor. Our brief assessed whether the vendor's proposed approach was compatible with the group's IIA-aligned audit charter and where the proposal's framing of "AI conclusions" conflicted with audit independence requirements.

OUTCOME

The CAE used our brief to negotiate a revised scope with the vendor — one that repositioned AI as a reading assist rather than a conclusion-generating tool. The revised pilot was then approved by the audit committee. Total cost of the Audit Workflow Review: RM 1,250. The CAE noted that the brief effectively amended the vendor's proposal before any software contract was signed.